For four years Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, has lived in the shadows, confined to his Islamabad home since a tearful televised confession in which he admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But yesterday the 76-year-old scientist returned to the spotlight with a bold new twist: that he had not meant a word of his earlier admission.

Reports that nuclear technology was smuggled abroad were "western rubbish", he brusquely dismissed nicknames such as "the Merchant of Menace" from a Time magazine cover.

"It doesn't bother me at all. They don't like our God, they don't like our prophet, they don't like our holy book, the Qur'an. So how could they like me?"

he swore never to cooperate with investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite persistent fears that nuclear technology traded by his accomplices could fall into terrorist hands.

"Why should I talk to them?" he said. "I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the NPT [nuclear non-proliferation treaty]. I have not violated international laws." He said details of his clandestine nuclear supply network were "my internal affair and my country's affair".

Now he hopes that the newly elected prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, will set him free.

Well, on the one hand, he's got a point - if Pakistan isn't a signatory of the NPT, there's not much that can be done.

On the other hand, as an enemy of peace, and indeed, as a merchant of death (selling weapons technology and know-how to pariah states who DO pose a risk as they have non of the control necessary for these types of armaments - one only has to look at the break-up of the Soviet Union), he really ought to be spoken to with extreme sanction, and so should his 'colleagues'.